Limbaugh adopts another "insane conspiracy theory" from the conservative blogosphere

Last time I checked in with American "Thinker," they were quoting an imaginary person talking about huge crowd turnouts at the 9-12 protests. Based on this latest story, their standards haven't improved.

Yesterday, Cat Corben published an investigative report speculating that the President lied about attending his daughter's soccer game this past weekend. No, really:

Something is most definitely wrong. The President of the United States venturing out to a soccer game that didn't exist in a high-crime area may have been lying about attending his daughter's soccer game last weekend.

Indeed, something is "most definitely wrong" here: Cat Corben.

Corben does some highly scientific MapQuest analysis about the amount of time it would take Obama to travel from the White House to the alleged soccer field. While MapQuest has options for driving and walking, they don't appear to have one for "Presidential Motorcade." But that's a secondary point. Here's the crux of the analysis:

Seems simple enough. But the story has several problems. The first one is a biggie in that there were no scheduled soccer games for Sidwell Friends April 10, as evidenced here. The second is that the area reported that the game was played at appears to be one of high crime, as documented here and here. [Update: reliable reports from DC residents indicates the area is not high crime - ed.] Additionally, this is a picture of the field via Google Maps, where Obama went to watch the game.

As you can see from the update in the post, one of the two main points was ruined by readers reporting that the field is not actually in a high crime area. The other main point was demolished by Tom Maguire, which Corben noted in an update

Update: The Stoddert Soccer League (club soccer, not school soccer) had matches at the same park on April 10th. See the schedule here: http://www.stoddert.com/docs/STODDERT_2010_Spring_U12_FINAL_-_Rev_1.pdf. Note that the first match is scheduled for 10 AM, which is the time the President would have had to leave the match to return to the White House at the time he did. The estimable Tom Maguire suspects that the 9 AM match was scrubbed from the schedule.

Additionally, the idea from the post that nobody from the press documented Obama's presence at the game has been destroyed by CBS' Mark Knoller and ABC's Jake Tapper, who called it an "insane conspiracy theory." Though I suppose they could both be in on it...

To recap: Corben claimed there were no soccer games at the field. There were. Corben claimed the field is in a high crime area. It isn't. And Corben suggested that nobody from the press saw Obama at the game. They did.

Of course this is all laughably ridiculous, and nobody with an iota of common sense or journalistic responsibility would pick this up - which is what made it a great fit for Rush Limbaugh on his show yesterday:

Corben closed the post -- before the update ruining the entire point, that is - with these lines:

And we shouldn't raise even more questions on his whereabouts? According to the MSM, the answer is yes.

Conservatives love to throw around statements about the "MSM" ignoring their absurd pet scandals. Sorry, Cat Corben, the only story here would be: "Conservative bloggers and Rush Limbaugh have no standards." But that's not exactly breaking news.